Techniques for FIT

• Look at your 2017 calendar. The whole year at once. Mark off the days you want to use for vacation. Mark conferneces and training you want to attend. 
• Share the calendar with your family. Ask if there are other dates they want you to mark off and add those in. 
• Commit to saying "no" when asked to change them.  Vow to work around any conflicts. 
• (If this makes you anxious, consider getting help to overcome it.)

Being Human - Follow up, follow through

It's all we got.

A wise boss once told me, "Greg, you've heard 'all a man has is his word,' right? Well in this job that includes follow up and follow through. It's all you got."

The side effect of a rule like that is it creates a lot of little "to-do's." 

So I'm adding to my wise boss' advice. "Greg, and since that's all you got, use tools and technology to help make sure you follow up and follow through on the most important things."

The best way? Lists. The best tool for lists? Goodtodo.com. 

I’m a fan of Mark Hurst at CreativeGood.com. His thoughts on taming the email beast (in Bit Literacy) are incredibly insightful.

Goodtodo works by helping you clean your inbox. If I’m replying to someone and need to remind myself to follow up next Tuesday, I simply bcc myself at tuesday@mygootodoaddress.com. That puts a reminder in my Tuesday task list. I move on to the next item.

This constant follow up and follow through has one side effect. The tasks pile up. Then an interesting thing happens and this is where a tool can help you filter non-important things.

If I move the same "follow up or follow through" ahead 3 or 4 times, it stands out. Something isn't right. This forces me to send a final note and delete the task. Something about it is not worth following up with. If allI have is follow up, it's being wasted with this task. 

That’s it. One simple tool like Goodtodo can act like a filter for the clutter rules like "all you have is follow up and follow through" create. 
 

Random Stuff

Food. 

Over the holidays, I received a fair number of books as gifts. There are the ones I requested like Merchant Princes, and The Success Equation. There are the ones from my shopping cart/wish list like Making Rain and Sell Your Business for an Outrageous Price. And finally there are the books that are reflections of who people think I am, like A History of Fly Fishing in 50 Flies, and The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom. 

In that last group is a book by Jim Gaffigan, Food: A Love Story. 

I didn't know what to make of it when I opened it. Is this a good book for me because I like funny things? Is it because I'm pudgy? Did I laugh at Jim Gaffigan once?

I read it. It's funny. Parts made me laugh out loud. And as it turns out, just like Jim, I love food. Not in the foodie way, but in the Jim Gaffigan way. As he writes, "Foodies will travel for miles in search of the perfect hamburger. . .Mostly, I just want the closest, best burger in town."

You should read it. 

(and no, I'm not saying you're fat)